The smartest move that you can make is composting all the leaves from your garden. Maybe you have not yet started utilizing the leaves from your garden or you do not know how to go about it then keep reading to learn all about composting leaves. Today we will speak about the best types of leaves that you can utilize for your composting and what is it that you can do to decay these leaves quickly and make them into rich compost.
Almost about 80% of all the tree’s minerals and nutrients are found in the leaves. They are popularly known as nutrient recyclers of nature. When you compose these leaves, you tend to use an excellent method to get all the valuable minerals and nutrients returned to the soil.
The best part about utilizing all the leaves from your garden is, it’s free! Now if your garden has trees in them, you have experienced that every fall the shedding of leaves to a point where they can bury you. Let’s make optimum use of free sources that you have in your garden. So instead of collecting them and getting rid of them let’s use them.
Conifer needles and all leaves we’ll break down eventually becoming leafmould. Certain leaves that include hornbeam, Beech, or oak do not require too much assistance and they also produce an amazing quality product.
Leaves that are thick include, sweet chestnut, horse chestnut, walnut, and sycamore must be shredded and then add them to your pile of leafmould because they take a long time to break down. If you can shred these leaves, you could then add them to your heap of compost.
Then you also have the evergreen leaves that include cherry Laurel, Aucuba, and Holly that are excellent to shred and add to your heap of compost. As soon as they break down you can then add them to your pile of leafmould.
Conifer needles take a very long time to decay approximately three years but they will break down. The clippings of the Conifer hedge are better to add in the heap of compost instead of the leaf mold pile.
You can also consider collecting pine needles and putting them in a different pile of leafmould because they tend to produce leafmould that is acidic. This is excellent if you plan to mulch ericaceous plans that include, blueberries, Pieris, camellias, azaleas, and rhododendrons.
First of all, you must have sufficient knowledge of the various types of leaves that you could utilize for composting especially if you require it to be efficient and fast. Cherry, beech, ash, birch, And Maple are various varieties of nuts and fruit trees that are excellent choices. They decompose very quickly and they also add balance nutrients to the compost pile. The best of all the leaves that you could utilize for compost is Maple leaves. They tend to break down very quickly adding a balanced nutrient makeup.
Leaves from ginkgo and magnolia will eventually produce waxy composition and may take many years in order to break down completely. This is the only reason why we recommend to not add them to your traditional pile of compost. Oakleaves can definitely be utilized however use them in moderation because they are acidic in nature.
I do hope these tips will help you with utilizing leaves for your compost. Thanks, take care.